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Magali

Asia Shcherbakova 00:18 So, before you join the program, when you were just reading about it, when you saw the information, what were you looking for and what were your expectations?

Magali 00:31 I was curious to see what the point of this kind of program was — what body awareness would concretely bring. I wasn’t exactly sure of the outcomes or what it would look like, etc. It was more a curiosity and an interest in neuroscience — to see what it could bring me exactly, but I didn’t know where it was heading.

Asia Shcherbakova 01:04 So you were curious, you were not sure what it was, but something was curious about it.

Magali 01:08 Exactly, that’s it.

Asia Shcherbakova 01:18 Can you explain a little bit your background, maybe your profession, maybe your experience with movement, anything that you feel is connected to why you are curious about it

Magali 01:31 I’m a teacher with young children in preschool. And I do a lot of physical activities — different sports, many styles of dance. I’ve always been very active. But then I realized that kinesthesia wasn’t my primary intelligence — and that I often struggle to intuitively move well in sports or find my balance. The more I practice, the better it gets, but it’s not obvious to know from within yourself how to run, how to move, to understand how your body moves when you dance, etc. So maybe, I thought maybe it could help me get a better sense of myself and develop certain skills to be more capable, or at least more comfortable in sports and dance.

Asia Shcherbakova 02:26 Thank you. And when you came to Baseworks, and when you tried Baseworks, what did it feel like? What is the experience? What does it feel like to do Baseworks practice? Can you explain it in your own words?

Magali 02:41 Yes. When I came to the first practice, I found it… unusual. I didn’t quite understand what I was looking for, what my objective was in doing the different movements — I was trying too hard to understand. In fact, sometimes we are very much in our heads and not in our bodies, precisely. So I was searching for the meaning. But even just after the first open class, I had already noticed some effects. When I was walking down the street, I was like, it’s true, you don’t need to have your shoulders raised, for example. So there were already some connections being made. But in the moment, when I was doing the movements, I was wondering what they were for, to relax — I was very much in my head.

Asia Shcherbakova 03:29 So when you first came, the movements felt strange, it was difficult to make sense of them. But eventually they started to make more sense, right?

Magali 03:39 Exactly.

Asia Shcherbakova 03:41 And how long did it take for you to feel like, oh, now I begin to understand why we’re doing these movements?

Magali 03:50 I’m not sure exactly when. I know that after the first class, I already saw an impact. For me, it was about lowering my shoulders. I realized that when I was talking to people, I thought, why do I need to hold myself like that? So I really focused on that element, for example. So from the very first class, there were things that made me think — maybe counter-productively (smiles)— about how I hold myself. I think it was around the halfway point of the course that I understood more fully, having a broader sense of my whole body, the impacts, the postures, what I was looking for when doing the movements.

Asia Shcherbakova 04:30 And can you describe the effects of doing Baseworks outside of the session? maybe as you see in your posture, in your movement, in your attention, anything that you feel has changed, where you started paying attention to things in new ways. can you give me some examples of that?

Magali 04:49 Yes, I’ve always had bad posture, actually. People would tell me to lift my shoulders, for example. But I tended to push my shoulders back, and then I’d have lower back pain. So I was never able to straighten up, because I felt the pain just moved. After Baseworks, I was able to see it as a whole. I truly understood that the pelvis comes into play to avoid arching my back, that my shoulders needed to be down and back. In short, the whole awareness of “how to straighten up” — not just “straighten up,” and then you end up more crooked than when you started, or you’re accentuating other misalignments you didn’t want. So I think about all those times when I walk, sometimes my head is too far forward — my chiro, for example, has been working on that with me for a long time. But why — now I understand… it’s about not understanding how to position myself. Now I understand that it’s more about releasing the spine, for example. So really in all aspects of posture, I understood how to achieve the goals I’d been given for a long time — like how to not just move the problem around, but to do it properly. It’s not so instinctive.

Asia Shcherbakova 05:54 Thank you. And what about the quality of attention? In Baseworks, we often do many things at the same time. The attention has to be everywhere. Can you describe your experience with that aspect of the practice? Was it difficult?

Magali 06:14 I think sometimes yes, sometimes no. There are movements that are more instinctive or more natural, more automatic — so some of them, I don’t think it’s the same for everyone, but they are… You do it and it’s already there. And others are more difficult, so you focus more on those. So the focus isn’t spread equally over everything, as if everything were complicated. On the other hand, yes, it requires attention for it to be useful. If you do it just to do it, and you do it all crooked, without paying attention, it wouldn’t do much.

Asia Shcherbakova 06:53 If you were to describe Baseworks to someone who has never it, how would you describe it?

Magali 07:00 I do it often these days. It makes me laugh because at the start, the first question I asked you was, “But what is it for?” And you told me, “Being aware of your body.” And I didn’t understand what “being aware of your body” meant. And then I understood little by little, and now, when people ask me, it’s like, “It’s about being aware of your body.” It’s about knowing where you are in space, and trying to undo automatisms or shortcuts. I think our body has taken [certain things into account?] for a long time because different things have led us — carrying a bag on one side, because we have a backpack, because we have inadequate resting postures, because we think that’s how our body relaxes. So I lost the thread of the question a bit, but I would describe it as learning to be aware of where one’s body is in space and how it’s positioned, because we’re never aware of it since we can’t see ourselves.

Asia Shcherbakova 08:00 Understood. And was there anything surprising? About what was difficult or something that changed.

Magali 08:16 I feel like I’m repeating myself, but truly all the impacts it has on my posture in general — I’m already starting to feel some effects on the tensions, but it’s a work in progress — I didn’t expect it to have that much of an impact, since my expectations weren’t very clear. I knew there was a lot I wanted to improve and better understand on the physical level, but I didn’t know exactly what the repercussions would be. So I think it surprised me to see it had that much impact — and that it affects how you do your exercises, how you walk, how you stand at a bus stop. In fact, knowing what you are in your body is quite vast, and it impacts every movement you make in your life, really.

Asia Shcherbakova 09:06 Ok thank you and can you tell me a little bit about your experience in doing the online course and the in-person sessions - this format. Did it work for you? Did doing the online pre-study help? Describe your experience with the format?

Magali 09:24 I think having online preparation before coming to class — sometimes you can’t exactly tell whether you’re doing the right thing, whether you’re well positioned, whether you’ve done it correctly, whether you’ve understood the goal or objective. On the other hand, when you arrive at the class, I feel you’re still better prepared and you can go further. Otherwise, if you’ve gone further, you can go even further. If we had done it for the first time in class, we probably would have stayed at the basic level and couldn’t have gone beyond. That is, “Oh, I already did this this week, I felt a pull here.” You know, like being able to look beyond… “Oh, this is the first time I’m doing this, I don’t know what’s happening.” So, alternating — going to understand, then going to see all the theory behind it, then understanding what you’re doing online, then practicing a little at first, then coming to class, and then having it done more explicitly — being told what we’re looking for or being corrected a little on what we do. I think it’s quite complementary and it allows you to progress faster.

Asia Shcherbakova 10:24 Thank you. And specifically about the structure of the Primer course, how we explain the concepts, the order of how we teach topics one after another. Did you feel like it was well structured or was it confusing anywhere?

Magali 10:41 No, it’s quite well structured, it’s clear, it’s fairly concise, sometimes a bit repetitive — but I think that’s also because there are people who perhaps didn’t understand the online videos and ask the same questions again — but in general, no, there’s no lack of structure.

Asia Shcherbakova 11:00 Thank you. In relation to other features of the online platform, for example, the smart revisit feature, or the forum, for exemple, when we were posting reviews or of every session, did you find it useful?

Magali 11:16 Yes, the links sometimes to related articles were super interesting. After that, you choose if you don’t have time to do everything, but there were a lot of very interesting articles. The fact that you can see other people’s comments — sometimes shared — yes, if you miss a class, you can actually have a detailed account of everything that was covered, in addition to having already seen it on the platform — that’s really great. The Smart Revisit — the only slight friction I had with it was that when I was doing a video, for example a review one, when I clicked back I’d land on two different ones and I no longer knew which one I’d done. Sometimes I ended up doing the same one twice and was like, “Ah, that’s the one I just did!” Anyway, I found it tricky because I think they show random elements, but sometimes they show the same ones, sometimes they’re changed — they show two, but when you click back, it’s not the same two. Anyway, a small thing, but it’s a detail. I can write them down on paper and keep track, or look for them myself. It’s just that when you do one and click back, the two options are no longer the same — so you think you’ll do the second one, but maybe it’s the one you just did. Just that.

Asia Shcherbakova 12:26 So you could not understand how to use it?

Magali 12:29 Yes, I can work with it. It’s more — they present us with two random options?

Asia Shcherbakova 12:34 Ah, two random options? Would you have preferred to have only one option?

Magali 12:37 No, I’d prefer the two options to stay the same.

Asia Shcherbakova 12:39 So you liked it?

Magali 12:42 Yes, it’s just that when I do one option and come back, the second one is no longer the same.

Asia Shcherbakova 12:46 They are always different, yes.

Magali 12:48 It had changed, but I hadn’t done the second one.

Asia Shcherbakova 12:50 Yes, yes.

Magali 12:50 I didn’t have time to do it and it had already changed.

Asia Shcherbakova 12:53 Ok.

Magali 12:54 I don’t know, it’s not clear.

Asia Shcherbakova 12:55 I understand what you are saying. That’s how it’s supposed to be. Did you make use of the subtitles? The French subtitles.

Magali 13:22 No.

Asia Shcherbakova 13:23 So you were just watching everything in English.

Magali 13:25 Exactly. - Once for a word, but… (laughs)

Asia Shcherbakova 13:29 And in terms of time commitment, do you feel like this program required more time Commitment than you anticipated or was it more or less what you expected?

Magali 13:42 It’s about what I expected. - And I think you can have impact regardless of how much engagement you put in, but the more time you spend, the faster things fall into place — but that’s up to each person, and even in the weeks when I had less time, I obviously got less out of it, but I still made progress — it didn’t prevent me from understanding what came later.

Asia Shcherbakova 14:07 Ok. And so… And do you think if you were to do only the Primer course without the in-person sessions, would you be able to understand what the method is about?

Magali 14:18 I’m not certain. Maybe, maybe not. It’s difficult to say for sure, but just being slightly corrected, or having someone from the outside make you realize you’re not aligned — that helps a lot versus continuing in the same patterns. I don’t know if over time it would self-correct, but it helps orient the focus in the online practices — so without that, I don’t know, even for motivation, I think.

Asia Shcherbakova 14:48 Okay. - Understood. Is there anything about this experience that you would like an outsider to know — something that isn’t obvious from the program description?

Magali 15:13 Maybe that it’s really worth trying — there isn’t much to lose. You have time to choose and it’s worth it because… It’s difficult to describe the outcomes the program can give since they’re different depending on the person, and the concept is abstract when you try to verbalize it too much. So, to someone outside, I would just say it’s worth trying and seeing what they can get out of it for themselves.

Asia Shcherbakova 15:44 Ok, that’s it. Thank you. Thank you very much.